So yeah, someone really pissed me off today.  I wanted to call them out on their shabby behaviour, but thought better of it.  Life being too short, such behaviour being unprofessional etc. Karma just dictates that you should try and let certain things go, learn to avoid the same situation in future, and eventually time will erase or mitigate any damage or insult done. If nothing else, you can add to your repertoir of wry cautionary tales.

When these moments come along, all you can really do is crank up the Portsmouth Sinfonia, and let your angst float away on a tide of godawful orchestral manglings 🙂

See?  All better now! 🙂

Queensland Floods

It’s a truly horrifying time for Queensland, and the flood is a bona-fide disaster of arse-kicking proportions.  Like everyone else I’ve been devouring the news sites, clicking on maps of the affected areas, and worrying about friends and family near the flooded areas.  It’s really sad to see such a beautiful city cop the brunt of this riparian smack-down.

Tehani Wessely of Fablecroft has put out a fundraiser to help those affected by the floods, an e-book edition of her new anthology After the Rain.  More info here: http://editormum.livejournal.com/266883.html

The Ideas File Is A Bleedingly Obvious Idea

As a writer, if you keep getting distracted by cool new ideas that take over from whatever project you’re currently working on, start an Ideas File.  Dump all the salient info into this file, and forget about it.  If it’s still capturing your imagination when you’re ready to start your next project (even if it’s 6 months later), it’s probably worth writing.  If it doesn’t rock your socks, it was not meant to be.  But at least you got your other stuff done and didn’t get derailed.  I should have started one of these things 2-3 years ago, instead of bounding from idea to idea like a hyperactive kitten.

Elliptical Rider:

There is now a great big stonking piece of exercise equipment in our living room.  Toddler Fisch “assisted” in its construction, and by all accounts it is a very cool new thing with moving pedals and big handle thingies.  Goodbye, spare tyre 🙂

Pimping my peeps:

Fellow WOTF winner and allround good guy Steve Savile has put the word out that his novel Silver is now $2.99 in e-book form, and I’m happy to do my part to endorse and pimp such a groovy book.  I devoured this book in a couple of days, and can’t recommend it highly enough.  Good fun, a great thriller that had me from start to finish, and he out-Browns Dan Brown.  I don’t normally read this genre but if I enjoyed it, anyone can.  It can be found at the following links:

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-An-OgmiosTeam-Adventure-ebook/dp/B00332FFHU/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_img_in

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/19399

Goodreads

Is very very good.  Since signing up to this website (and rediscovering public transport) I have absolutely smashed my way through a stack of books.  There’s just something about being accountable with your reading, and being able to easily score/review a work.  I used to throw the occasional “I love this book” on the old LJ blog, but this is arguably a much better way of managing one’s reading.

Horrorscope 2010 Recommended Reading List:

A couple of my short stories made this year’s Horrorscope Recommended Reading List, and “The School Bus” from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #46 came Highly Recommended.  Cool! 🙂 I find myself sharing the list with some terrific writers and their works, so I’m quite pleased with that.  http://www.horrorscope.com.au/2010/12/editorial-horrorscopes-2010-recommended.html

A brief moment of basketballery:

The brother-in-law got NBL player of the week!  Nicely done, Luke! http://www.nbl.com.au/news/article/2010/december/big-croc-claims-weekly-award/

The Adventures of Toddler Fisch

(we’re having a bit of fun getting him to go to sleep at the moment – he will typically thrash around with his long legs, knocking on the walls, flipping upside down, throwing his covers off, getting out of bed etc.  He’s often a bundle of energy, till the golden moment that sleep claims him)

Mrs Fisch: “How’s he going?”

Me: “I’m not sure what he’s doing in there, but I think it might be Parkour.”

Fisch-Kringle, n, (fsh-krnggl):

An annual experience.  Used when Jason Fischer draws your name out of the hat for the office Secret Santa, and leaves it to the very VERY last minute to dash out and purchase the required gift.  Attempts to disguise himself as the secret santa are instantly detected (like the time he bought everything in fluffy pink, so the recipient would think their secret santa was a female).  He does this every year without fail.

Whoops, that should be Ray Gun Revival.  Every Day Publishing, the crew behind the Every Day Fiction e-zine, have just announced the resurrection of the zap-tastic Ray Gun Revival.  Here’s the skinny:

“Ray Gun Revival (RGR) is an online magazine dedicated to fun stories, grand escapism, and good old sensawunda. RGRl provides just that, a throwback publication that revisits space opera and golden age sci-fi. Their stories focus more on character development than hard science and sail all the wide-open waters between science fantasy and harder SF. Think of the original Star Wars stories, Doc Smith’s Lensman series, the Warlord of Mars tales from Edgar Rice Burroughs. Think of everything from John Carter and Gully Foyle to Kimball Kinnison and Han Solo. They are bringing out the deepest elements of what has traditionally been rather superficial fiction and updating them for a new generation of fiction enthusiasts.”

More info here, get onto it: http://www.raygunrevival.com/nov2010/index.html#submit